Matthew Chapter 9 verse 37 Holy Bible

Pulpit Commentary

Pulpit CommentaryVerses 37, 38. - The utterance is given word for word (except one transposition) at the beginning of the address to the seventy in Luke 10:2. But while serving there as an introduction to the rest of the speech, the reason for it is so much more self-evident here that St. Matthew seems to have recorded it in its original connexion. Our Lord himself, feeling the shepherdless condition of the people, desires to call out the interest of his disciples in it. He wants them to realize both the need of the people and the possibility that lay before the workmen. Changing the metaphor, he bids them pray him, who alone has the right and power, to send more workmen to reap these fields. Verse 37. - Then saith he unto his disciples, The harvest - of human souls (John 4:35-38). Truly. So also the Revised Version; too strong a rendering of μέν. Is plenteous (cf. Matthew 10:23; Bengel), but the labourers are few. Who besides himself? John the Baptist, some who had been healed, e.g. the Gadarene demoniac (Mark 5:20, possibly also the blind men of ver. 31), and perhaps a few unknown true believers. Not the twelve, for these are evidently distinguished, and only to be included under the labourers spoken of in the end of the next verse. If, however, the utterance was originally spoken to the seventy (vide supra), the reference would be to the twelve.

Ellicott's Commentary

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(37) Then saith he unto his disciples.--No where in the whole Gospel record is there a more vivid or more touching instance of the reality of our Lord's human emotions. It is not enough for Him to feel compassion Himself. He craves the sympathy of His companions and disciples, and needs even their fellowship in prayer. A great want lies before Him, and He sees that they are the right agents to meet it, if only they will pray to be made so; or, to put the case more clearly, if only they will pray that the work may be done, whether they themselves are or are not the doers of it.The harvest truly is plenteous.--This is the first occurrence in the record of the first three Gospels of the figure which was afterwards to be expanded in the two parables of the Sower and the Tares, and to reappear in the visions of the Apocalypse (Revelation 14:14-19). We find, however, from the Gospel of St. John--which here, as so often elsewhere, supplies missing links and the germs of thoughts afterwards developed--that it was not a new similitude in our Lord's teaching. Once before, among the alien Samaritans, He had seen the fields white as for the spiritual harvest of the souls of men, and had spoken of him that soweth and him that reapeth (John 4:35-36).